Time Magazine ran the following photo on its cover during its coverage of the war in Lebanon between the Islamic terror group Hizbullah and Israel. The person who took that photo was a Time photographer, Bruno Stevens.
We now learn that not only did Time Magazine mislead the public by making false assertions about the photo and its captions, purposefully inserted captions that were misleading, and omitted photos and information that would cast a completely different light on the incidents photographed.
The editors at Time must account for their actions. I doubt that they will. No one will hold them accountable.
Meanwhile, anyone else notice that Marie Claire also decided to photo edit Elizabeth Vargas' head onto a woman who was sitting behind an anchor desk while breast feeding. Seems to me that the problems with photo editing aren't confined to the political. It's everywhere, and people in the industry simply don't care about the ramifications of these actions, including the introduction of bias and purposefully misleading the public unless the whistle is blown.
The problem is that few are punished for their actions, and it goes on regardless of the supposed editorial controls. Indeed, in the instance of Time Magazine, it was the editors themselves who edited and rewrote the captions to give the photos a completely different meaning. Ace observed that there were three specific misrepresentations: 1) that Hizbullah shot down an Israeli jet (a false assertion); 2) the target was illegitimate (it was a tire dump); and 3) the target was a Hizbullah missile launcher adjacent to a Lebanese military base.
Time specifically refused to run another photo that would have shown the Hizbullah missile launcher and its location in proximity to the fire. That's willful action on their part to shade and mislead the coverage. It's similar to the actions by Reuters in running false and misleading captions describing the photos - omitting critical information, adding purposefully biased information, or both.
And we still have to worry about future examples of journalists stage managing events for maximum impact.
Others blogging and calling for heads to roll: Confederate Yankee, Ace of Spades, Blue Crab Boulevard, Dan Riehl, Michelle Malkin.
Technorati: photoshopping, photo+editing, fauxtography, reuters, Boghnat, riot, palestinians, israel, videotape, idf.
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